“Ah, don’t say that,” said the other, with incredulity and disgust in her voice. “So many say it when it isn’t true. It is impossible that any one so comfortably dressed as you, is without money. Compare your warm and beautiful wrap with my thin shawl.” “It is true I have a good cloak,” Cartice answered, “but I am probably poorer than you, for I cannot pay for either my shelter or my food. Your position is superior to mine, for you are trying to earn a livelihood, while I am longing to do so and know not where to begin. And besides poverty I have other woes from which I hope you are exempt. I tell you this that hereafter you may not judge from appearances. Many whom you envy are, perhaps, more miserable than yourself.” Her old childish fancies came back to her sometimes, and she would half believe that some good fairy would suddenly comfort her and mercifully change everything. And her people--the dear, kind, fond, ever-courteous people of her very own world, unseen by all who had not sympathetic eyes, came to comfort her. The inner world in which they dwelt afforded her a refuge when the miseries of the outer one became too heavy. Perhaps it was because of much time spent there that she scarcely took on the ways and speech of this world. There was ever something unusual and not easy to understand in her presence, something that suggested another and a different world. “O my own people, my dear people of my dreams! How far I have wandered in my search for others like you clothed in the flesh!” she said, on returning from a long walk one evening, as she looked at the dingy hotel where she was obliged to take unwelcome refuge. Within was no soul akin to hers, not one whose words or presence, in any sense mitigated the deep solitude and loneliness of spirit in which she lived. With it all she was physically wretched. A climate that was ungenial, a sunless room and a daily diet of anxiety combined had made deep inroads on a physique elastic but never rugged. Overstrained nature was giving way. For weeks her body had been racked with pain. Fevers came, tarried awhile and went away to come again, and languor had taken entire possession of her. One day the culmination came. A neighbor passing her open door saw Cartice lying helpless on the floor where she had fallen. Assistance was called and she was lifted to the bed, rigid as in death. “A congestive chill,” said the doctor. Then science and humanity united their efforts to save her from death and succeeded. When her husband came back in the evening, she was lying powerless to speak and only faintly conscious of being alive. The doctor--may it be a star of great radiance on his breast in the unseen world in which he now dwells--was attentive and kind to a point far beyond the ordinary. He had seen much of life and its inevitable suffering. Experience and a heart of exceptional goodness enabled him to read the signs of the sick soul as well as the sick body at a glance.